Rivers rerun: Police ‘recover’ N111m from 23 INEC officials (updated)

The police on Tuesday disclosed that they recovered N111m from some officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) involved in the legislative rerun-election in Rivers state.

Ibrahim Idris, inspector-general of police (IGP), had set up a panel to investigate allegations of fraud and bribery in the December 10 election.

But Nyesom Wike, Rivers state governor, went to court to challenge the probe of the election.

However, the court did not give an order stopping the investigation.

On Tuesday, Damian Okoro, chairman of the panel, while presenting his report, said a “total sum of N111m out of N360m was recovered from 23 electoral officials”.

He said while three senior INEC officials got as much as N20m, some got N15m to influence the election.

Okoro alleged that there were some cases of misconduct on the part of some electoral officers, who were compromised in the line of duty.

“By this investigation, this panel has diligently unraveled what went wrong with the re-run election in Rivers, the details of which are contained in the report,” he said.

“We discovered that failure of leadership and followership rather than law enforcement was responsible for the political upheaval in the state.”

He added that the task given to the panel was challenging because of the tense political and security atmosphere in the state.

The chairman said lawless elements targeted political opponents of their sponsors, and law enforcement agents, especially the police.

He attributed some of the violent acts to inflammatory statements by some “narrow-minded” politicians.

“Apart from their utterances, politicians in their desperation for power, also armed thugs who unleashed terror on their opponents,” he said.

Ibrahim Idris, inspector-general of police, said a report and recommendation would be forwarded to the attorney-general and minister of justice for his advice.

He said appropriate action would be taken against indicted persons to serve as deterrent.

“We are going to take appropriate action in conjunction with other security agencies to put an end to this problem,’’ he said.

He urged Nigerians to have confidence in the security agencies and believe the panel report.

Idris alleged that Wike refused to cooperate with the team even when it visited him in Port Harcourt.

He said that the investigation would go a long way toward ending electoral malpractices in the country.